Category: Miscellaneous/One-offs

Alice in Wonderland: A classic tale pretty much everyone knows the beats of, whether through the original novel, or through a myriad of derivative works and adaptions from around the world. Some stick relatively close to the source material, others take their own liberties with it, and some use its influence as an underlying base to tell a vastly different story. Alice in Dreamland, is fairly in the third camp, telling the story of an Alice, reading the original story herself, when she happens upon the White Rabbit. But things quickly diverge from there, as a certain Darkness looms above…

So hey, here’s MBE’s first foray into animation! Though unlike most animated adaptions I’ve seen of Alice in Wonderland, this one directed by Kentaro Hakusaka utilizes stop-motion, in addition to dolls (created by Mari Shimizu) instead of the usual articulated puppets. Which when combined with creepy, slightly nauseous-looking visuals and a weird yet enjoyable soundtrack by arai tasuku (with the opening and ending by a group called “Black Violets”), make for an interesting (if not nightmare-fuel) variation on a classic tale.

I originally commissioned this film near the start of this year after it popped up on ADC and piqued my interest. It was planned to be a joint with another group, but those plans fell apart due to the key member having to pull out. So it languished (depressions a killer), until the idea was given to ask Collectr on Bakabt for help. While I regret relatively shoving him and his staff into helping with it, it was both educational and fun to work with them, and hopefully will do again at some point (but with more planning, and less out-of-the-blue-ness). Staff credits are as follows:

In 198X, the Earth was facing a massive crisis. The galaxy-conquering Space Religious Order Black God have truly begun their plans to eliminate Buddhism, and replace it with Christianity. But three young people have been chosen to fight to protect the sacred teachings of Buddha! They are the Buddhism Force Buddhaman!

So, uh, this is an odd little indie short made by… Buddha Film Entertainment (They named it after this, which was their first work, released in 1986), who have done a few other odd films here and there until about 2005. Maybe we’ll sub more of them, but who knows. Also: Video quality is terrible (bad VHS transfer to DVD by the director, the others aren’t great either), you have been warned. Audio is pretty crappy too, which didn’t help with translation (Bible Skin Attack?) With all that said, enjoy!

“Yuko Murakami is an Ordinary High-School Student who goes to a Shinto shrine to pray one day. She knocks down the bell in front of the shrine when she rings it, and awakens Kami-sama, or God, who bestows upon Yuko the power to become a fighter for justice, a Super Hero, as Bishoujo Kamen Poitrine. She transform with her Orgel Pendant (later with a mirror). She solves cases adopting the people form that she want using her Cosmo Bracelet, and she fights all kinds of villains who want to make life hard for children with the help of her magic Belle Sabre.”

This isn’t so much an April Fools gag as it is that Nanto releasing an episode of another Toei Fushigi Comedy Show “Dokincho! Nemurin” reminded me I had a script for this episode lying around. I inadvertently deleted the raws at some point, and the torrent on nyaa is dead, so you probably shouldn’t expect any other episodes anytime soon. So a buncha peeps seeded the torrent. Still shouldn’t expect any more episodes until I get other stuff outta the pipeline first.

Packaged together with an issue of Televi-kun last year, these are pretty much Hyper Battle Videos for that Space Sheriff Gavan THE MOVIE film. Well, one of them is, the other is basically a brief summary of all the events in the original Space Sheriff Gavan tv show.

Pundercracker: HEY KIDS! WATCH THIS MOVI- oh, you did?
…Uh…well….well here’s an advertisement for it anyway!

Champstice: You know a film has got problems when the 8 minute promotional video is honestly just as (if not more) entertaining than the film it’s supposed to be tying into.
P.S. Before anyone asks: No, we don’t have any plans to sub the original series.

In celebration of the Black Blurays being announced, here’s a special that features Black times 4! It’s one in a similar vein to Kamen Rider World/Super Sentai World in that it’s non-canon material that was made mostly to sell 3D glasses, but still a fun (if silly) ride in it’s own right. So please enjoy this convoluted Crisis scheme.

Pundercracker: This is a fun little short. The plot doesn’t make much sense and it has some very blatant 3D gimmick shots, but the action is solid. Fans of BLACK and RX should get a kick out of it!

Champstice: There’s two sub-tracks with three minor differences between each other (Kamen vs Masked {some people like it translated, others don’t}, Golgom vs Gorgom{I see people bouncing between how this is romanized}, and Black vs BLACK{title card has it in all caps}). Apart from that they’re exactly the same. Also no this isn’t a Golgom plot.